The Price
The dream is one thing. Turning it into reality is another. Micah suggests there is a price to be paid, in two instalments. The down payment is to address such immediate problems and issues as can be addressed — food and homes and the basic needs of the common people. The second is a long-term operation to build a new society on more basic and honourable principles where virtues such as justice, kindness and humility count for more than ritual and ceremony.
In these few verses we have the meeting of three worlds. The first is the world as it was, or possibly as they believed it was and had been brought up to believe it was, but as always the perception is what matters. Their story, as it had always been told, was still the source of their faith and inspiration. It was a world that had a sense of permanence about it — hills and mountains. There was something basic — they knew where they had come from. The story gave them a sense of identity. They knew who they were — or at least who they thought they were or who they were supposed to be (6: 3-4).
The second is the world as it is. Micah’s description of himself, feeling as if he no longer belongs to it in (7:1-6), probably rings bells for many. He has lost his appetite for it. Those whom he trusted no longer seem to be around and he cannot find their replacement. With such widespread bribery and injustice he has no stomach for the ‘me-first’ society he finds everywhere, especially when it is difficult to find trust among friends and family.
The third world then is the dream that sustains him. He will put his trust in God— in kindness, justice and humility wherever he finds it. In some ways these verses are a summing up of the whole prophetic message in this period of Israel’s history and still offer a powerful word for us in many situations, some of them so similar and yet at the same time so different. Put yourself in his shoes. Don his spectacles and take a look at your immediate environment. Identify one situation where you can exercise justice, kindness and humility. That is your down payment. Time then to set to work on that new society.